


inspires me

by cherishiskisa



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bucky explores Manhattan, Canon-Typical Violence, Frozen Yogurt, M/M, Panic Attacks, Reunions, Steve is really sad, but it's all okay in the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-20
Updated: 2015-05-20
Packaged: 2018-03-31 11:23:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3976273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherishiskisa/pseuds/cherishiskisa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"what i want from cap 3 is sam and steve busting their asses going across the world looking for bucky and endangering their lives every 20 minutes and it cuts to bucky who is still safely in new york eating frozen yogurt"</p><p>Well, here you go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	inspires me

**Author's Note:**

> EDITED LIKE 3 YEARS AFTER I WROTE THIS: this used to be called (can you save my) heavydirtysoul but it's not 2015 anymore and i got embarrassed about this being named after a twenty one pilots song so i just changed the title to a different lyric from the same song. 
> 
> well, i have never written MCU fic before, but i saw this post by drparisa on tumblr ("what i want from cap 3 is sam and steve busting their asses going across the world looking for bucky and endangering their lives every 20 minutes and it cuts to bucky who is still safely in new york eating frozen yogurt") and was SUDDENLY INSPIRED.
> 
> so here you go!
> 
> i'm only on tumblr for another two weeks so if you want to talk to me about this, pop me a message @deitied thanks !!!!!
> 
> lil trigger warning for panic attacks and emetophobia, title taken from my fav song off twenty one pilots' new album (lmao)

They’re surrounded.

“Bad news,” Sam mutters. “We’re surrounded.”

Steve shrugs, back-to-back with Sam as they both spin around to appraise the numbers of HYDRA agents closing in on them. “Nothing we can’t handle, I hope.” He really, really hopes. “How many of these have we done already?”

“Five, at last count,” Sam replies, moving into a more defensive posture as the circle around them tightens. “But I was never too good at math.”

“Surely,” says one of the HYDRA agents in an attempt to be cool, “you know enough to understand that these odds don’t look good for you.”

“Lowest odds pay off the highest,” Steve says, and launches into action: the shield is flying, Sam is flying, there’s gunfire and he can hear his own heartbeat and he’s getting so tired of this.

“You sounded like one of those action movie Captain Americas just then,” Sam yells, teasing, as he spins through the air to take down a whole row of attackers.

“Mel Gibson? Or—” _punch_ — “Sylvester Stallone?”

Sam can’t quite answer, and neither can Steve. Some guy’s just punched him extra hard in the jaw (“Not the jaw!” Sam shouts, laughing) and Steve is vaguely wondering when he actually stopped having fun doing this. It had been fun at some point, surely, in a righteous-anger sort of way, but that must have been long ago. It’s good of Sam to keep up the mood, though, and pretty soon they’re the only ones left standing.

Sam wheezes slightly as he settles back to the ground and folds the wings away. “I was thinking more Channing Tatum,” he says. “Maybe Keanu Reeves.”

“You,” Steve chuckles, wincing as a bruise on his side begins to heal, “are way too obsessed with that TV show.”

“It’s really good!” Sam insists, and kicks away the hand of some still-not-unconscious guy on the floor who had feebly tried to push him over. “And it totally deserved a second season.”

“Let’s just get out of here,” Steve mutters, returning his shield to its hold on his back. 

“Six down, a hundred more to go,” Sam agrees grimly, and they leave the warehouse.

***

Bucky has decided that he wants to be Bucky, now, not “the Soldier” or, let alone, “the Asset.” It’s the first decision he’s made in a while, so he’s celebrating with yet another decision: blueberries atop his frozen yogurt, and chocolate flavor instead of vanilla. 

He takes his usual seat beside the window and resumes scrolling through Instagram.

***

Steve is bleeding a _lot_ , and Sam is using a machine gun to hold back the agents coming towards them. “I’m out of bullets,” Sam growls. “I’m about to start using this thing as a club.”

“Go ahead,” Steve says weakly, gritting his teeth as he feels his flesh starting to close up where the wound is. “I’ll help you out in just a minute here.”

“You’re getting lazy,” Sam laughs, then, “oh, shit—” and the fistfight starts. The bulletless machine gun does make a wonderful club, and Sam gets to clobber quite a few advancing agents before one shoots him in the knee and he goes down, cursing loudly.

“Dammit,” Steve mutters, pulling himself up to his feet and hoping that whatever small regeneration his cells had managed in the few minutes he’d had to heal will hold up. “Get behind that desk, I’ll take care of these guys.”

“You will be the one that needs to be taken care of, Captain,” one of the agents snaps. “Once you’re _dead_.”

“Man, where do these guys get their lines?” Sam complains. “That didn’t even make any sense.”

“Tell me about it,” Steve mutters, dodging a few blows and launching into his standard near-gymnastic routine of jumping over people and kicking two guys at once and doing “really unnecessary flips that don’t even look that cool” (Natasha’s words). His work with the shield is getting a little sloppier, and he finds himself having to reach farther and farther to grab it each time it ricochets back in his direction.

“You’re out of practice,” sneers an agent, trying for a right hook.

“ _You’re_ out of practice,” Steve huffs, losing patience, and slams him in the face with the shield. “Fuck you, anyway.”

“Language!” Sam calls, and Steve hears him curse and fire a few shots from a handgun; people are starting to come at them from all directions again.

Steve notices a grenade rolling along the floor. “We need to get out of here,” he says, mind flashing wildly to being tiny — somehow, so much more fearless — and jumping on top of one of those like it was what he had been born to do. And maybe he had been. “Can you walk?”

“I can crawl,” Sam says eagerly enough. “And if I can’t crawl, I can fly.”

“Sounds good,” Steve says, and grabs a gun from the agent he’s fighting. He uses it to shoot a series of holes in the roof, and then a well-aimed throw of his shield knocks the ceiling loose in that space. “Well, whenever you’re ready.”

Sam groans and pulls himself to his feet before grabbing Steve’s arm. They’re out of the building just a couple of seconds before it blows, and the blast sends them careening through the air with no direction.

They land in a field half a mile away, and Steve closes his dusty eyes and says, “I’m getting too old for this.”

***

Bucky tries the “Greek-style” flavors. He doesn’t like them and sticks to the normal frozen yogurt that the shop serves. 

“Would you like to try our special today?”

“Sure, why not. Thanks.” He’s remembered that politeness is something that most people value, and he’s been trying it out. He smiles at the last second and it earns him a free topping for his next purchase.

“And if you come here one more time, your next medium-sized cup will be free!” the cashier chirps.

He needs to a find a new frozen yogurt place. He doesn’t like settling down.

***

“We’ve been expecting you,” says the slimy little man who had been sitting behind a desk in an otherwise totally bare room. 

“Shit,” Steve mutters.

“You can say that again,” Sam says.

And Steve does; the walls of the building come down, revealing secret compartments full of HYDRA agents armed to the teeth.

“If you were gonna ambush us, why go to all this trouble of being theatrical?” Sam complains before pulling out his guns and beginning to fire two at once. People start going down, but more take their place, and Steve settles in for a long one.

When it’s over, they have a file in their hands. It’s a log of all of the places that “the Asset” had been called into over the years. This file could get Bucky locked away in prison for several lifetimes. Steve doesn’t even want to look at it — he feels nauseous enough as it is — but he knows he’ll have to at some point. Maybe there’ll be a pattern, maybe Bucky will be tracing back his own footsteps to try to remember himself. 

“This is a lot of dead ends, man,” Sam mutters, flipping through the pages. “Lot of trails gone cold.”

“Still,” Steve says, leaning his head back against the concrete of the wall he’s sitting up against. “They knew we were coming. Word must be getting around.” He pauses, and sighs. “I just wish it were getting around to… well. You know.”

Sam nods slowly. “We’ll find him, Steve.”

***

The second frozen yogurt place that Bucky tries is way too expensive. He’s figured out that he likes strawberry flavor and he doesn’t like paying more than five dollars. Difficult, in New York, but not impossible. So he moves on, thinking that his favorite topping might be peanut brittle, depending on what flavor he gets. 

He also downloads Twitter. His first tweet: “Not sure apple-flavor frozen yogurt is a good idea. Stick to the plain stuff.”

He’s very proud of himself. Wonders if Steve would be proud of him, too.

***

Steve breaks down outside a base in Bucharest. Panic attack like he hasn’t had in a long time. He falls to his knees in the dirt. Always so calm during a fight — adrenaline doesn’t kick in until later. His too-powerful heart is going a million miles an hour, and there’s nothing he can do to calm it down, and he’s gasping, “We’ll never find him— we’re never gonna find him—” over and over and over. 

But Sam knows what to do; knows how to ask yes-or-no questions that won’t put too much strain on Steve to answer, knows how to be there without turning into an oppressive presence. It’s helping, until Steve remembers that Sam had been a group therapist before Steve had come in and ruined his life, and the sudden wrench of guilt inside him makes him scramble to pull the helmet off his head before he throws up.

He’s pathetic.

He must have said that out loud, because Sam frowns and kicks idly at a pebble on the ground. “No, you’re not. You’re just dealing with a lot.”

There is a pause as Steve wipes his mouth and gets to his feet. He feels like absolute shit, but at least he’s not hyperventilating anymore. He looks at Sam, and sees Sam starting to open his mouth with an awful suggestion in his eyes, so he cuts him off before he can even start. “Don’t even think about it.”

Sam shrugs. “Just lettin’ you know it’s an option.”

“It’s _not_ an option,” Steve growls. “Where’s the next one?”

“Kosovo,” Sam says. “We’ll have to take a train. And then steal a car.”

“Great,” Steve says, teeth gritted, and they keep looking.

***

Bucky finds himself on a zigzag across Manhattan; from frozen yogurt to Starbucks and then on to the next pair of those. He tries Thai food, Mexican food, street vendor hot dogs (“they don’t make these like they used to,” he complains to no one), Ethiopian food, and stays well away from the Russian tearoom. He’s currently camped out on the fire escape of the apartment that’s leased under Steve’s name; there’s dust an inch thick on the furniture inside and Bucky wonders when he’ll come back. He wonders why Steve has barely bothered with decorating the apartment, or at least what little of it Bucky can see through the window. He also wonders where to get cheap bread to feed pigeons with, and considers stealing some: is it worth spending money on that? He mulls it over as he has another serving of frozen yogurt.

***

“He’s dead,” spits a HYDRA agent as Steve punches him.

“No, he’s not,” Steve pants, hitting him harder. “He’s not dead.”

“Went off our radar,” a scientist cowering behind the desk says. “That’s never happened.”

“Maybe he’s just smarter than you.” More hitting, more taunting, more, more, more. Steve takes deep breaths. 

Bucky’s not dead. If Bucky were dead, Steve would know. Somehow.

They sleep in the shittiest motel Steve has ever seen, and Sam looks at him with concern. 

“Yes, I’ll fit on the bed,” Steve replies to his unasked question, rolling his eyes.

Sam shakes his head. “Not what I was gonna ask.” He sighs, carefully setting the folded-up wings against the wall. “How long are we going to keep doing this?”

“Until we find him.”

“Steve—”

“Until we find him, Sam.” Steve takes a deep breath. His heartbeat says _bucky, bucky, bucky._ “He has to be out there somewhere.”

It’s a shame. Steve always had wanted to see the world. And now he’s been in ten countries in three weeks and hasn’t seen a damn thing that didn’t just look like Brooklyn, that didn’t look just like being alone for the rest of eternity.

***

Memories are funny things. They don’t come back to Bucky like he was expecting them to; he’d felt nothing, looking at the display in the Smithsonian, and it had terrified him. He had been expecting a sudden rush — clutching at his head — gasping in relief. But there had been none of that. And there still isn’t. Instead, he just wakes up and _knows_ that if he wants to make a girl (or Steve) blush, he has to smile just so; right corner of his mouth not as pulled up as the left one will get him a little dimple in his cheek. Cock his head to the side, blink slow, and she melts. Even with his hair all stringy and a chinful of stubble it works. And he doesn’t consciously remember the subway lines and what stops he needs to get off at to get where, but manages anyway. His veins are still in the pattern of the New York City subway. And he instinctively holds doors open for dames and says “thank you” with a grin when his food arrives and walks on the right side of the sidewalk and doesn’t stop and stare too much at the unimaginably tall skyscrapers because he doesn’t want to seem like a tourist. It’s natural. He’s growing into his skin again.

He wonders if he should get a haircut, but decides he’ll let Steve pass judgement on that when he gets back.

He also wonders what’s taking Steve so long.

***

“Steve,” Sam says. Steve hates his tone. Doesn’t want him to say whatever he’s about to say. “We should have found him by now. If he wanted to be found or was anywhere in Europe, we should have found him by now.”

“Maybe he doesn’t want to be found,” Steve mutters. “I thought we agreed. We look even if he doesn’t want us to.”

“Don’t you think he’s had enough of other people making choices for him?”

That shuts Steve up real fast.

***

Bucky takes a day trip back to Brooklyn, but doesn’t stay long. His muscle memory guides him back to their old apartment. There’s a sign on the wall that says “scheduled for demolition,” and he stares at it for a long time. Maybe he can call in some favors with Steve’s friends, once Steve gets back. Have them save it.

But there’s no point in holding onto old memories like that. Steve’s new apartment is just fine, too. Big bed, soft couch. Clean kitchen. Electricity.

He wonders, yet again, where the hell Steve is, and buys himself a few issues of People Magazine. Settles down in a corner booth in Starbucks. Considers buying some new clothes. Tries to remember how Steve took his coffee and gets a headache.

***

Steve is so damn tired. It’s starting to show up in his fighting style. He’s sloppier with the follow-through on punches, he’s tripping over his own feet. He thinks his hairline might be receding from all the stress. 

Sam notices but doesn’t comment. Steve is glad for that. Sam always knows what to do, and Steve takes a backseat on planning break-ins and interrogations and fights because Sam’s better at it and all Steve wants is to rest his brittle bones.

“I hope he’s okay,” he says into the night. It’s two hours until sunrise and neither of them is asleep. His voice is hoarse, like he hasn’t used it for a while. “Wherever he is.”

“He can take care of himself,” Sam replies, but he sounds uncertain. “I hope so, too.”

Steve sighs and closes his eyes. Listens to his old heart beating.

“Are you okay?” Sam asks.

“Fine,” Steve replies automatically.

“No, man, I’m being sincere here.” Sam frowns. “What’s up with you?”

“Not enough sleep,” Steve replies, and it’s not quite a lie. “Funny. Seventy years asleep and I still can’t get enough.”

Sam doesn’t say anything. Steve thinks he might have fallen asleep and wishes he could just let himself go. Slip away.

Bucky should have let him drown in the Potomac.

***

Bucky’s tried damn near every frozen yogurt place in Manhattan and he’s getting a little tired of waiting for Steve to come back. At this point, he’s living in Steve’s apartment, having found a spare key under the doormat about a week or so ago, and he’s done Steve the favor of buying new groceries and cleaning up his fridge.

He hopes that wherever Steve is, he’s taking care of himself.

***

Steve takes a bullet to the stomach and goes down. This’ll take a while to heal. 

“Steve!” he hears Sam yell. Gunfire, punching, shouting. Sam can take the rest down on his own. Probably.

“I’m okay,” he mumbles, hissing through his teeth in pain. Some guy runs at him and Steve groans, swinging the shield and shoving him back. More punching, Steve’s lazy aim. He gets knocked back. Can he get up? His vision is going black. 

_Is this worth it_? says a voice inside his head. 

“Shut up,” he growls to himself. That burst of frustration is enough to get him to stand up, hit the agent again. Again. Again. Again.

“Steve, I got something,” Sam shouts. He’s in the corner, typing furiously at the keyboard of a sinister-looking computer.

Steve hits the agent one more time and the man crumples. Steve limps over to where Sam is. “What?” he grunts, pressing a hand over his bullet wound.

“Location tracker,” Sam replies, typing faster. “Fuck, I’m not good at computers, Tasha should be here for this. Anyway, looks like that dude a while back musta lied to us. They didn’t lose track of him.”

Steve’s heart beats faster and he leans in. “And?”

“Just a second,” Sam snaps. A few terrifying seconds as the computer buffers. Starts to zoom in, and — 

Crashes.

“What the fuck,” Steve says. His pulse roars in his ears and he wants to punch something hard enough that it crumbles into powder.

“Nothing,” Sam mutters, visibly disappointed. He straightens up. He and Steve both stare at the screen: “TRACKING INACTIVE,” it says.

“Fuck,” Steve mutters, something within him boiling over. “I can’t— let’s get out of here. Where’s the next one?”

“Steve…”

“Where is it?”

He doesn’t mean to yell, but he does, and he only somewhat regrets it. 

Sam sighs and shuts off the computer. “Madrid.”

“How many more?”

“We’re almost halfway done.” They start walking out of the facility. “Have you considered taking a break?”

“Sam, we’ve talked about this.”

“I don’t mean giving up,” Sam clarifies, “I mean taking a break. Like a holiday.”

“I can’t take a goddamn holiday,” Steve scowls.

“Steve, you need to rest,” Sam says flatly. “You’re wearing yourself too thin. If we keep going like this—”

“Then what?” Steve huffs.

Sam shrugs. “I dunno. You can’t go on like this forever. You’re not Superman.”

“I’m Captain America,” Steve says, almost petulant.

“Even Captain America needs to relax sometimes,” Sam says, tone gentler. Steve wants to snarl something in response — how can he relax when Bucky’s out there somewhere, alone, scared, fighting for his life, maybe — but instead he just slumps. There’s nothing left to say.

He does need a rest, as much as he hates to admit it.

“…we’ll talk about it later.”

“Good enough for me,” Sam says evenly with a nod, and they keep going.

***

Bucky’s been cleaning Steve’s apartment lately, as well as going through his DVD collection. It only took him a few minutes to crack Steve’s Netflix password, and he’s getting very well-acquainted with the X-Files. He goes on daily runs, wearing a fake brace to cover his arm: it means people treat him nicer and won’t ask questions about why he’s wearing just one glove. And he’s trying to figure out what Steve’s favorite flavor of frozen yogurt probably is, which means he does a lot of experimentation.

He puts it all on one of Steve’s cards and hopes he won’t mind; he feels bad about it but had been running out of options, as the money he’d secured from the safe houses left around DC and New York was almost completely spent by then.

Sometimes, Bucky wears Steve’s shirts and tries to imagine what life was like before. Puts on an old record and tries to feel something. Muscle memory means he has no issue with turning on the record player and getting everything set up, but he can’t remember the words. Can’t remember the way he used to grab his Stevie and spin him around until he was spitting anger but still happy, clinging to Bucky and complaining of dizziness even as he moved with him.

All he can remember is the love. It makes his head spin a little even to think about Steve, even now, even so many years later.

He hasn’t felt religious in lifetimes, but he starts praying for Steve to come home.

***

This might be it. They’ll either find Bucky or some final hint as to where he might be, or they’ll get killed here.

Steve approaches this fact with a soldier’s resignation: it may as well happen here. It may as well happen now, and it may as well happen during this fight, this fight for Bucky.

And at the moment, it’s seeming less and less likely that they’ll find him here.

So, last option, then. 

Something takes over Steve: he’s never been a quitter, but he’s so damn tired and he misses Bucky so damn much that, well, there’s nothing left to do but sit back and relax and hope it doesn’t hurt too much.

Sam sees the moment when Steve’s resolve goes out, and he’s all the way on the other side of the building and can’t do anything about it when Steve starts taking punches and taking them and taking them. Steve can’t stop himself from drawing a sickening comparison to that awful day, to letting his shield fall and giving himself completely over to Bucky; Bucky could have beat him to death then — the Winter Soldier — and Steve would still have thanked him for his presence. 

“Steve!” Sam is yelling, watching Steve barely defending himself. “Don’t— Steve, come on—”

Steve groans, swinging the shield. A half-hearted twist through the air and he’s done, knocked unconscious by someone with the same kind of metal hand as Bucky. _How fitting_ , he thinks, and sighs as he crumples to the floor.

He comes to another moment later and realizes what the fuck he’s doing. He can’t give up, despite how every fibre of his being is begging him to. Bucky wouldn’t — Bucky wouldn’t want him to do this. HYDRA agents are still kicking him and one’s got a gun aimed at his head, so he holds his breath.

Supernatural stillness — he was always good at it. Every muscle locks, even his eyes don’t twitch. He can hear Sam shouting, far away, but he’s completely concentrated on this. Being dead. He’s thought about it enough to where he knows exactly what to do, exactly how to breathe in between heartbeats and in between the blinks of the people watching him. Pulls his entire being inward, no need to move his arms or legs, and one of the agents takes his pulse; Steve focuses and focuses and stops his heart for just two beats. Just long enough.

“He’s dead,” the agent who’d taken his pulse says. “Let’s clear out before anyone else comes.”

Apparently, Sam doesn’t matter enough to be dealt with, and soon the warehouse is silent.

Steve hears Sam take a ragged breath, still too far away. “Steve?…”

Steve doesn’t react. The coast has to be clear, he has to be absolutely sure. Just a few more moments.

“Steve, fuck.” Sam is at his side, rolls him over, and Steve slowly opens his eyes.

Sam yelps and jumps back, and Steve starts laughing. He sits up. “Sorry. You’re not rid of me yet.”

“Fuck you,” Sam spits, but he’s laughing in relief, too. “How the hell did you do that?”

Steve shook his head. “I’ve always been good at playing dead. Got a lot of practice, I guess.” He sighs, laughter fading. “Maybe you were right.”

“About what?” Sam asks. Steve can tell that he’s badly shaken up, but won’t call attention to it if Sam doesn’t. 

“Taking a break,” Steve murmurs. “This is a dead end, they’ll all be dead ends unless we give it some time.”

“And you need to rest,” Sam reminds.

Steve shrugs. “So do you.”

Sam stands up and holds out a hand to Steve, which Steve takes to pull himself up. 

“Think I broke a few ribs,” Steve mutters, wincing a little.

“You’ll break a few more once Natasha gets ahold of you,” Sam chuckles. But then he’s quiet for a moment. “Can I ask what changed?”

“I think I did,” Steve replies, and they leave it at that.

They catch the first plane back to New York. Steve knows that he can’t go on the way he is, but he still feels like the worst guy on the planet for leaving this mission behind, even if it’s just for a couple of weeks.

He feels like he’s betraying Bucky, yet again. But he’ll deal with all of that awful guilt burning him up once he’s slept a few nights in his own lonely bed and had some organic juice to replenish his vitamins. Sam says he’ll check in every few days and they can be back on the job in “no time, like we never even stopped.”

Steve knows he’ll never forgive himself anyway.

***

Something’s different in the air. So Bucky gets two frozen yogurts instead of one — strawberry for himself, chocolate for Steve, just in case — and takes them home. They melt on the way and he puts them in the freezer even though he knows it won’t help. 

The sun is setting and Bucky sits out on the fire escape to watch it.

***

The spare key under his doormat is missing, which Steve doesn’t think too much of. His landlady is constantly chastising him for having one there (“Anyone could just walk in!”), so she probably hid it away somewhere. Steve rifles through the many, many pockets of his coat until he finds his key, and unlocks the door. He sighs. He doesn’t want to stay alone in his tragically dusty and tragically empty apartment — that might be worse than living on a battlefield like he’s been doing. He’s never dealt well with solitude, for all his bravado. “Sure you don’t want to stay for some drinks?” he asks Sam.

Sam shakes his head. “I don’t wanna impose.”

“You wouldn’t be,” Steve assures him. “I’ve gotten kinda used to having you around, as much as I hate to say that.”

“Shut up,” Sam chuckles, and Steve pushes the door open.

Someone clears their throat and Steve stops dead in his tracks.

“Sam,” he says, voice muffled like he’s in a dream, “put your gun away.”

“Hey,” Bucky says, looking terribly awkward. “I didn’t know you’d— I got two things of froyo—” The neologism sounds at once totally alien but charmingly familiar in his mouth and Steve thinks he’s going to die. “Strawberry for me, chocolate for you. Didn’t know Wilson would be here, so, uh, there’s not enough for three. And it’s mostly melted by now.”

“I said put your gun away,” Steve breathes, taking a small step back and bumping into Sam. “He’s offering us frozen yogurt and wearing my sweatpants, he’s not hostile.” He stares at Bucky, starving, parched after seventy years in the desert. “Are you?”

“No?” Bucky says, wrinkling his nose. “I’m doing this all wrong, but I’m not hostile.”

“You talk too much when you’re nervous,” Steve says, feet bringing him forward again of their own accord. Muscle memory. He and Bucky are magnets. “Bucky…”

“And I didn’t know you’d be back today,” Bucky says, “if at all.”

“Your voice sounds hoarse, are you getting a cold?” Steve asks.

“What the fuck,” Sam mutters.

“No, I just haven’t talked a lot lately, no one to talk to,” Bucky explains.

“Oh,” Steve says. “Makes sense.”

They’re a couple of feet away from each other now. 

“I hope you’ve been takin’ care of yourself,” Bucky says.

“God, you’d kill me if you knew what I went through for you,” Steve says, and he’s starting to smile the way he hasn’t smiled in a lifetime.

“I was there, too,” Sam says. “If anyone cares.”

But they’ve stopped paying attention to anyone but each other; they’re circling now, wanting to see from every angle, and Steve has forgotten that Bucky could kill him as easily as he could kiss him. 

“Is your arm hurt?” Steve asks, nodding at the cast.

Bucky shakes his head and takes off the sling, slides the plaster off his arm. “Easier than wearing long sleeves all the time.”

Steve wants to ask him about everything. What has he been doing? What has he been thinking? What does he remember?

Will he stay?

Bucky is the first to reach out. That’s surprising but not entirely unexpected. Wherever Steve was reserved and shy and crabby, Bucky filled in the gaps with nurture and touch and smiles. But he’s not smiling now. 

“I can’t remember,” he says, stepping closer and running his thumb over Steve’s cheek, his jaw, his lower lip. “Were we… this?”

“I am in way over my head,” Sam mutters faintly. “I’m just… gonna leave. Call if he starts killing you.”

Steve needs to tell Natasha, he needs to tell Fury, he needs to discuss with the whole damn world how to proceed from here. What do they do with the files that they found — the incriminating information? Is there a legal course of action to take?

Instead of saying any of that, he leans in and breathes “We can be”. Presses their lips together. Presses their bodies together. Bucky moves to meet him, exhaling a small sound, and Steve lets go.

All of his worries can wait.

For now, he’s just glad to be home.

 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading <333 pls come & talk to me on tumblr !!! my url is deitied and pls let me kno what u thought in a review or smth!!
> 
> (ps did yall catch those subtle references to Steve Rogers at 100 bc they're in there)


End file.
